Archive for month: June, 2013

2013 Updates

Panda Dance — June 11, 2013

While not an actual Panda update, Matt Cutts made an important clarification at SMX Advanced, suggesting that Panda was still updating monthly, but each update rolled out over about 10 days. This was not the “everflux” many people had expected after Panda #25.

“Payday Loan” Update — June 11, 2013

Google announced a targeted algorithm update to take on niches with notoriously spammy results, specifically mentioning payday loans and porn. The update was announced on June 11th, but Matt Cutts suggested it would roll out over a 1-2 month period.

Penguin 2.0 (#4) — May 22, 2013

After months of speculation bordering on hype, the 4th Penguin update (dubbed “2.0” by Google) arrived with only moderate impact. The exact nature of the changes were unclear, but some evidence suggested that Penguin 2.0 was more finely targeted to the page level.

Domain Crowding — May 21, 2013

Google released an update to control domain crowding/diversity deep in the SERPs (pages 2+). The timing was unclear, but it seemed to roll out just prior to Penguin 2.0 in the US and possibly the same day internationally.

“Phantom” — May 9, 2013

In the period around May 9th, there were many reports of an algorithm update (also verified by high MozCast activity). The exact nature of this update was unknown, but many sites reported significant traffic loss.

Panda #25 — March 14, 2013

Matt Cutts pre-announced a Panda update at SMX West, and suggested it would be the last update before Panda was integrated into the core algorithm. The exact date was unconfirmed, but MozCast data suggests 3/13-3/14.

2012 Updates

Panda #23 — December 21, 2012

Right before the Christmas holiday, Google rolled out another Panda update. They officially called it a “refresh”, impacting 1.3% of English queries. This was a slightly higher impact than Pandas #21 and #22.

Page Layout #2 — October 9, 2012

Google announced an update to its original page layout algorithm change back in January, which targeted pages with too many ads above the fold. It’s unclear whether this was an algorithm change or a Panda-style data refresh.

Penguin #3 — October 5, 2012

After suggesting the next Penguin update would be major, Google released a minor Penguin data update, impacting “0.3% of queries”. Penguin update numbering was rebooted, similar to Panda – this was the 3rd Penguin release.

August/September 65-Pack — October 4, 2012

Google published their monthly (bi-monthly?) list of search highlights. The 65 updates for August and September included 7-result SERPs, Knowledge Graph expansion, updates to how “page quality” is calculated, and changes to how local results are determined.

Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update — September 27, 2012

Google announced a change in the way it was handling exact-match domains (EMDs). This led to large-scale devaluation, reducing the presence of EMDs in the MozCast data set by over 10%. Official word is that this change impacted 0.6% of queries (by volume).

Panda #20 — September 27, 2012

Overlapping the EMD update, a fairly major Panda update (algo + data) rolled out, officially affecting 2.4% of queries. As the 3.X series was getting odd, industry sources opted to start naming Panda updates in order (this was the 20th).

7-Result SERPs — August 14, 2012

Google made a significant change to the Top 10, limiting it to 7 results for many queries. Our research showed that this change rolled out over a couple of days, finally impacting about 18% of the keywords we tracked.

June/July 86-Pack — August 10, 2012

After a summer hiatus, the June and July Search Quality Highlights were rolled out in one mega-post. Major updates included Panda data and algorithm refreshes, an improved rank-ordering function (?), a ranking boost for “trusted sources”, and changes to site clustering.

Link Warnings — July 19, 2012

In a repeat of March/April, Google sent out a large number of unnatural link warnings via Google Webmaster Tools. In a complete turn-around, they then announced that these new warnings may not actually represent a serious problem.

Panda 3.7 (#15) — June 8, 2012

Google rolled out yet another Panda data update, claiming that less than 1% of queries were affect. Ranking fluctuation data suggested that the impact was substantially higher than previous Panda updates (3.5, 3.6).

May 39-Pack — June 7, 2012

Google released their monthly Search Highlights, with 39 updates in May. Major changes included Penguin improvements, better link-scheme detection, changes to title/snippet rewriting, and updates to Google News.

Knowledge Graph — May 16, 2012

In a major step toward semantic search, Google started rolling out “Knowledge Graph”, a SERP-integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see “knowledge panels” appear on more and more SERPs over time. Also, Danny Sullivan’s favorite Trek is ST:Voyager?!

April 52-Pack — May 4, 2012

Google published details of 52 updates in April, including changes that were tied to the “Penguin” update. Other highlights included a 15% larger “base” index, improved pagination handling, and a number of updates to sitelinks.

Penguin — April 24, 2012

After weeks of speculation about an “Over-optimization penalty”, Google finally rolled out the “Webspam Update”, which was soon after dubbed “Penguin.” Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing, and impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries.

Panda 3.5 (#13) — April 19, 2012

In the middle of a busy week for the algorthim, Google quietly rolled out a Panda data update. A mix of changes made the impact difficult to measure, but this appears to have been a fairly routine update with minimal impact.

Parked Domain Bug — April 16, 2012

After a number of webmasters reported ranking shuffles, Google confirmed that a data error had caused some domains to be mistakenly treated as parked domains (and thereby devalued). This was not an intentional algorithm change.

March 50-Pack — April 3, 2012

Google posted another batch of update highlights, covering 50 changes in March. These included confirmation of Panda 3.4, changes to anchor-text “scoring”, updates to image search, and changes to how queries with local intent are interpreted.

Search Quality Video — March 12, 2012

This wasn’t an algorithm update, but Google published a rare peek into a search quality meeting. For anyone interested in the algorithm, the video provides a lot of context to both Google’s process and their priorities. It’s also a chance to see Amit Singhal in action.

February 40-Pack (2) — February 27, 2012

Google published a second set of “search quality highlights” at the end of the month, claiming more than 40 changes in February. Notable changes included multiple image-search updates, multiple freshness updates (including phasing out 2 old bits of the algorithm), and a Panda update.

Venice — February 27, 2012

As part of their monthly update, Google mentioned code-name “Venice”. This local update appeared to more aggressively localize organic results and more tightly integrate local search data. The exact roll-out date was unclear.

February 17-Pack — February 3, 2012

Google released another round of “search quality highlights” (17 in all). Many related to speed, freshness, and spell-checking, but one major announcement was tighter integration of Panda into the main search index.

Ads Above The Fold — January 19, 2012

Google updated their page layout algorithms to devalue sites with too much ad-space above the “fold”. It was previously suspected that a similar factor was in play in Panda. The update had no official name, although it was referenced as “Top Heavy” by some SEOs.

Search + Your World — January 10, 2012

Google announced a radical shift in personalization – aggressively pushing Google+ social data and user profiles into SERPs. Google also added a new, prominent toggle button to shut off personalization.

January 30-Pack — January 5, 2012

Google announced 30 changes over the previous month, including image search landing-page quality detection, more relevant site-links, more rich snippets, and related-query improvements. The line between an “algo update” and a “feature” got a bit more blurred.

2011 Updates

December 10-Pack — December 1, 2011

Google outlined a second set of 10 updates, announcing that these posts would come every month. Updates included related query refinements, parked domain detection, blog search freshness, and image search freshness. The exact dates of each update were not provided.

Panda 3.1 (#9) — November 18, 2011

After Panda 2.5, Google entered a period of “Panda Flux” where updates started to happen more frequently and were relatively minor. Some industry analysts called the 11/18 update 3.1, even though there was no official 3.0. For the purposes of this history, we will discontinue numbering Panda updates except for very high-impact changes.

10-Pack of Updates — November 14, 2011

This one was a bit unusual. In a bid to be more transparent, Matt Cutts released a post with 10 recent algorithm updates. It’s not clear what the timeline was, and most were small updates, but it did signal a shift in how Google communicates algorithm changes.

Freshness Update — November 3, 2011

Google announced that an algorithm change rewarding freshness would impact up to 35% of queries (almost 3X the publicly stated impact of Panda 1.0). This update primarly affected time-sensitive results, but signalled a much stronger focus on recent content.

Query Encryption — October 18, 2011

Google announced they would be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. Unfortunately, this disrupted organic keyword referral data, returning “(not provided)” for some organic traffic. This number increased in the weeks following the launch.

Pagination Elements — September 15, 2011

To help fix crawl and duplication problems created by pagination, Google introduced the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” link attributes. Google also announced that they had improved automatic consolidation and canonicalization for “View All” pages.

Expanded Sitelinks — August 16, 2011

After experimenting for a while, Google officially rolled out expanded site-links, most often for brand queries. At first, these were 12-packs, but Google appeared to limit the expanded site-links to 6 shortly after the roll-out.

Panda 2.4 (#6) — August 12, 2011

Google rolled Panda out internationally, both for English-language queries globally and non-English queries except for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Google reported that this impacted 6-9% of queries in affected countries.

Google+ — June 28, 2011

After a number of social media failures, Google launched a serious attack on Facebook with Google+. Google+ revolved around circles for sharing content, and was tightly integrated into products like Gmail. Early adopters were quick to jump on board, and within 2 weeks Google+ reached 10M users.

Panda 2.2 (#4) — June 21, 2011

Google continued to update Panda-impacted sites and data, and version 2.2 was officially acknowledged. Panda updates occurred separately from the main index and not in real-time, reminiscent of early Google Dance updates.

Schema.org — June 2, 2011

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft jointly announced support for a consolidated approach to structured data. They also created a number of new “schemas”, in an apparent bid to move toward even richer search results.

Panda 2.0 (#2) — April 11, 2011

Google rolled out the Panda update to all English queries worldwide (not limited to English-speaking countries). New signals were also integrated, including data about sites users blocked via the SERPs directly or the Chrome browser.

The +1 Button — March 30, 2011

Responding to competition by major social sites, including Facebook and Twitter, Google launched the +1 button (directly next to results links). Clicking [+1] allowed users to influence search results within their social circle, across both organic and paid results.

Panda/Farmer — February 23, 2011

A major algorithm update hit sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results (a number that came directly from Google). Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues. Panda rolled out over at least a couple of months, hitting Europe in April 2011.

Attribution Update — January 28, 2011

In response to high-profile spam cases, Google rolled out an update to help better sort out content attribution and stop scrapers. According to Matt Cutts, this affected about 2% of queries. It was a clear precursor to the Panda updates.

Overstock.com Penalty — January 2011

In a rare turn of events, a public outing of shady SEO practices by Overstock.com resulted in a very public Google penalty. JCPenney was hit with a penalty in February for similar bad behavior. Both situations represented a shift in Google’s attitude and foreshadowed the Panda update.

2010 Updates

Social Signals — December 2010

Google and Bing confirmed that they use social signals in determining ranking, including data from Twitter and Facebook. Matt Cutts confirmed that this was a relatively new development for Google, although many SEOs had long suspected it would happen.

Negative Reviews — December 2010

After an expose in the New York Times about how e-commerce site DecorMyEyes was ranking based on negative reviews, Google made a rare move and reactively adjusted the algorithm to target sites using similar tactics.

Instant Previews — November 2010

A magnifying glass icon appeared on Google search results, allowing search visitors to quickly view a preview of landing pages directly from SERPs. This signaled a renewed focus for Google on landing page quality, design, and usability.

Google Instant — September 2010

Expanding on Google Suggest, Google Instant launched, displaying search results as a query was being typed. SEOs everywhere nearly spontaneously combusted, only to realize that the impact was ultimately fairly small.

Brand Update — August 2010

Although not a traditional algorithm update, Google started allowing the same domain to appear multiple times on a SERP. Previously, domains were limited to 1-2 listings, or 1 listing with indented results.

Caffeine (Rollout) — June 2010

After months of testing, Google finished rolling out the Caffeine infrastructure. Caffeine not only boosted Google’s raw speed, but integrated crawling and indexation much more tightly, resulting in (according to Google) a 50% fresher index.

May Day — May 2010

In late April and early May, webmasters noticed significant drops in their long-tail traffic. Matt Cutts later confirmed that May Day was an algorithm change impacting the long-tail. Sites with large-scale thin content seemed to be hit especially hard, foreshadowing the Panda update.

Google Places — April 2010

Although “Places” pages were rolled out in September of 2009, they were originally only a part of Google Maps. The official launch of Google Places re-branded the Local Business Center, integrated Places pages more closely with local search results, and added a number of features, including new local advertising options.

2009 Updates

Real-time Search — December 2009

This time, real-time search was for real- Twitter feeds, Google News, newly indexed content, and a number of other sources were integrated into a real-time feed on some SERPs. Sources continued to expand over time, including social media.

Caffeine (Preview) — August 2009

Google released a preview of a massive infrastructure change, designed to speed crawling, expand the index, and integrate indexation and ranking in nearly real-time. The timeline spanned months, with the final rollout starting in the US in early 2010 and lasting until the summer.

2008 Updates

Google Suggest — August 2008

In a major change to their logo-and-a-box home-page Google introduced Suggest, displaying suggested searches in a dropdown below the search box as visitors typed their queries. Suggest would later go on to power Google Instant.

Dewey — April 2008

A large-scale shuffle seemed to occur at the end of March and into early April, but the specifics were unclear. Some suspected Google was pushing its own internal properties, including Google Books, but the evidence of that was limited.

Universal Search — May 2007

While not your typical algorithm update, Google integrated traditional search results with News, Video, Images, Local, and other verticals, dramatically changing their format. The old 10-listing SERP was officially dead. Long live the old 10-listing SERP.

False Alarm — December 2006

Supplemental Update — November 2006

Throughout 2006, Google seemed to make changes to the supplemental index and how filtered pages were treated. They claimed in late 2006 that supplemental was not a penalty (even if it sometimes felt that way).

2005 Updates

Big Daddy — December 2005

Technically, Big Daddy was an infrastructure update (like the more recent “Caffeine”), and it rolled out over a few months, wrapping up in March of 2006. Big Daddy changed the way Google handled URL canonicalization, redirects (301/302) and other technical issues.

Jagger — October 2005

Google released a series of updates, mostly targeted at low-quality links, including reciprocal links, link farms, and paid links. Jagger rolled out in at least 3 stages, from roughly September to November of 2005, with the greatest impact occurring in October.

Google Local/Maps — October 2005

After launching the Local Business Center in March 2005 and encouraging businesses to update their information, Google merged its Maps data into the LBC, in a move that would eventually drive a number of changes in local SEO.

Gilligan — September 2005

Also called the “False” update ? webmasters saw changes (probably ongoing), but Google claimed no major algorithm update occurred. Matt Cutts wrote a blog post explaining that Google updated (at the time) index data daily but Toolbar PR and some other metrics only once every 3 months.

Personalized Search — June 2005

Unlike previous attempts at personalization, which required custom settings and profiles, the 2005 roll-out of personalized search tapped directly into users? search histories to automatically adjust results. Although the impact was small at first, Google would go on to use search history for many applications.

Bourbon — May 2005

“GoogleGuy” (likely Matt Cutts) announced that Google was rolling out “something like 3.5 changes in search quality.” No one was sure what 0.5 of a change was, but Webmaster World members speculated that Bourbon changed how duplicate content and non-canonical (www vs. non-www) URLs were treated.

Allegra — February 2005

Webmasters witnessed ranking changes, but the specifics of the update were unclear. Some thought Allegra affected the “sandbox” while others believed that LSI had been tweaked. Additionally, some speculated that Google was beginning to penalize suspicious links.

Nofollow — January 2005

To combat spam and control outbound link quality, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft collectively introduce the “nofollow” attribute. Nofollow helps clean up unvouched for links, including spammy blog comments. While not a traditional algorithm update, this change gradually has a significant impact on the link graph.

2004 Updates

Google IPO — August 2004

Although obviously not an algorithm update, a major event in Google’s history – Google sold 19M shares, raised $1.67B in capital, and set their market value at over $20B. By January 2005, Google share prices more than doubled.

Brandy — February 2004

Google rolled out a variety of changes, including a massive index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), increased attention to anchor text relevance, and the concept of link “neighborhoods.” LSI expanded Google’s ability to understand synonyms and took keyword analysis to the next level.

Austin — January 2004

What Florida missed, Austin came in to clean up. Google continued to crack-down on deceptive on-page tactics, including invisible text and META-tag stuffing. Some speculated that Google put the “Hilltop” algorithm into play and began to take page relevance seriously.

2003 Updates

Florida — November 2003

This was the update that put updates (and probably the SEO industry) on the map. Many sites lost ranking, and business owners were furious. Florida sounded the death knell for low-value late 90s SEO tactics, like keyword stuffing, and made the game a whole lot more interesting.

Supplemental Index — September 2003

In order to index more documents without sacrificing performance, Google split off some results into the “supplemental” index. The perils of having results go supplemental became a hotly debated SEO topic, until the index was later reintegrated.

Fritz — July 2003

The monthly “Google Dance” finally came to an end with the “Fritz” update. Instead of completely overhauling the index on a roughly monthly basis, Google switched to an incremental approach. The index was now changing daily.

Esmerelda — June 2003

This marked the last of the regular monthly Google updates, as a more continuous update process began to emerge. The “Google Dance” was replaced with “Everflux”. Esmerelda probably heralded some major infrastructure changes at Google.

Dominic — May 2003

While many changes were observed in May, the exact nature of Dominic was unclear. Google bots “Freshbot” and “Deepcrawler” scoured the web, and many sites reported bounces. The way Google counted or reported backlinks seemed to change dramatically.

Boston — February 2003

Announced at SES Boston, this was the first named Google update. Originally, Google aimed at a major monthly update, so the first few updates were a combination of algorithm changes and major index refreshes (the so-called “Google Dance”). As updates became more frequent, the monthly idea quickly died.

2002 Updates

1st Documented Update — September 2002

Before “Boston” (the first named update), there was a major shuffle in the Fall of 2002. The details are unclear, but this appeared to be more than the monthly Google Dance and PageRank update. As one webmaster said of Google: “they move the toilet mid stream”.

Landing pages should be the Ying to your Yang – you know, something you can’t live without. It’s the invitation card to your site of which you make a poor presentation and you won’t get that many viewers which would be bad for SEO. There are a couple of things to accomplish on landing pages that ensure your landing page does what its supposed to:-

To ensure these accomplishments are met here is a checklist to improve your SEO campaigns

1. Align headlines with intent

Your headlines are what captures the users, the bolder and graphical elements is what gets the users attention first. With clear communication on what the page is about, and query intent written out in blue, gives the user the two seconds needed to pull them to your site.

2. Match content with query intent

Okay so you know users won’t wait around to read a lot of content even if your header has intent. A simple paragraph of 200 words should not be a task for anyone but if it doesn’t satisfy my query intent those may be the longest 200 word paragraphs ever.

3. Will a quick scan answer who, what and why?

We all do it, peruse through a site to get a gist of what its all about. Can a quick scan answer what your brand is all about. Further engaging the user in your brand make sure user intent isn’t buried. Remember you only have your user for a couple of seconds.

4. Simple to navigate through

You pulled me in with the bold headlines now what? Is it easy for me to know what to do next? That should be another element you should take into consideration.

5. On-page modification based on query intent

Instead of having users going back to search results to modify search query, having on-site options to modify search.

6. Next click consistency

A great user experience is a good user engagement strategy. Moving from landing pages to main sites should be obvious to the user which in turn equals higher ranking potential.

7. Sharing what you find

So i get what i have been looking for, i would probably want to share this with others. Is this possible with your landing page? Social media sharing is a great tool to provide on your site stretching reach of your audience.

In summary, site usability, onsite engagement and user experience have become major assessment values for search engine rankings. For success in SEO you need to take a look at these tips as the key.

Search engine optimization might seem simple when you are looking at one specific region, but when you are looking at SEO from an international level it becomes a different ball game. Like in different regions its only right to say you should expect different demographics for SEO strategies. SEO professionals should have some core factors that help gain traction internationally in mind when taking on a task. We take a look at these key factors and how much of a consideration they should put forefront.

Understand the Environment

They say in Rome do as the Romans do, which is difficult to know when in fact your are in Canada. This geographical difference puts one at a disadvantage because you are up against established forces. All in all its just a disadvantage doesn’t kick you out of the race.

Domain

Which domain you are using and where its hosted is another factor any SEO professional should keep in mind. You have more traction where you are hosted for the simple fact that people associate more with local domains.

Decisions

Going global is an action that is totally doable but its not for the faint hearted. Choosing whether to use country-based TDLs or using a single website depends more on your situation than your pockets. If you are doing well selling key chains in your country and want to expand abroad it is more likely for you to maintain a single site. With physical business location all around the world it would be business savvy to host in the target nation.

Google Properties

If you have physical presences in a country it helps to list it in Google places helps you. Listing your company in countries you are expanding to and connecting to your site if it is one specific to that region or to a page within the site, that helps.

Links

The links a site gets say from a domain in Germany with the a .ge link, Google derives from that. This is an important consideration if at all you were to get better SEO rankings, the functionality so as to get links derived from the same region.

Language and Definitions

Nothing kills a site than one that you don’t understand the language used, clearly you won’t stick around there for long. The reason for hosting different sites in different regions is to get the message across in the said regions. Those loosely translated sites are even more irritating to consumers, get a copywriter who understands the target language.

All in all, plans sound all good until you get down to the financing. Stay on your lane! Work with what you have got.

https://www.1300seonow.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1300SEONOW-Logo-300x91.jpg00Davidhttps://www.1300seonow.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1300SEONOW-Logo-300x91.jpgDavid2013-06-07 15:09:122013-06-07 15:09:12Will Google be evaluating the use of rel="author" moving forward?

Hi, Matt. Which aspect of Google updates you think the SEO industry simply won’t get? Where do you see many SEOs spending too much energy on when they could be taking care of other things?
Computerklaus, São Paulo, Brazil

Have a question? Ask it in our Webmaster Help Forum: http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

Want your question to be answered on a video like this? Follow us on Twitter and look for an announcement when we take new questions: http://twitter.com/googlewmc

https://www.1300seonow.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1300SEONOW-Logo-300x91.jpg00Davidhttps://www.1300seonow.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1300SEONOW-Logo-300x91.jpgDavid2013-06-05 00:08:382013-06-05 00:08:38What are some misconceptions in the SEO industry?